Varly looks like DeNiro in Raging Bull, only angrier. (Capture by @Caps_Girl)

Milan Lucic and the Bruins are too much for the Caps to handle for a second straight night. (Photo credit: Mary Schwalm)

Every great song is about loss of some kind: loss of life, loss of a beautiful woman, or loss of that loving feeling. The Capitals should probably download some Righteous Brothers on their iPiddles about now. Maybe some Chuck Brown to commemorate the miserable funk they’re in. Maybe some Hank Williams to soundtrack the drowning of sorrows. Or maybe some Dark Tranquility— you know, death metal: really brutal stuff to remind them of how brutal this game was.

What can we say? Besides the last ten minutes, this was some of worst Caps hockey we’ve seen in more than a year. But we can’t deny that Bruins were truly dialed in, most of all due to senior goalie Tim Thomas, who stopped 38 of 39 Caps shots (a season high). But it must be said that the lion’s share of the shots he faced seemed predestined for his pads. Not that he wasn’t terrific, but that Caps awfulness might have inflated that perception.

It seems unfair to pick any players out for bad performances; it was almost uniformly bad. Like last game, the Caps are still wracked by injury, direly missing Boyd Gordon and Mike Green in particular. Like last game, they struggled to clear the defensive zone and coordinate forward thrusts, often feeding avaricious Bruins perching on the forecheck. Like last game, they didn’t put pucks in the air against a virtuoso butterfly goalie who owned the low area. And just like last game, they were hoisted with their own petard. Bruins beat Caps 4-1.

Why does every Caps power play come with complementary shorthanded chance for the other team?

Ian and Peter have been vicious towards Marcus Johansson, but he wasn’t bad at all tonight. Then again, the notoriously bad facer-offer took none of them in his own zone, so let’s temper the defensive accolades.

Both Brooks Laich and Mike Knuble put a lot pucks in front of the net, but they simply could not score. Of all the Caps players, they’re the two for whom this axiom is most likely true: the goals will come.

Tim Thomas. Dammit. I honestly thought he retired last year. Why couldn’t they have started the guy who pilots the Millennium Falcon in Jedi? What’s his name? Tuukka Rask.

Given how tired everyone looked tonight, is it possible that Michal Neuvirth shared his flu bug with his teammates? Or is that too conspiratorial? Are we wearing tin-foil hats?

Joe B's suit-of-the-night

Alright, let’s put this night to bed. The Caps lost this game in the same fashion they lost Tuesday, but all is not lost. They’ve amassed two hours of valuable footage detailing precisely how not to play ice hockey. Their injured players are on the mend. Their healthy players are fed up with losing. They’re motivated, insurgent, and- most of all- Angry.

The only forlorn folks out there are we fans. We’ll have to power through. If we can make it to Saturday, everything will be fine. Everything will be fine. Pretty please.